The subject matter disclosed herein relates generally to hand hygiene compliance and particularly to tracking and encouraging worker compliance with hand hygiene protocols.
In a hospital setting, hospital associated infections may cause undue illness to patients. One way of decreasing the number of hospital associated infections is for hospital workers to wash their hands at key phases of patient care. In an effort to reduce the number of hospital associated infections, hospitals have implemented hand hygiene protocols for hospital staff. For example, staff at a hospital may be instructed to wash their hands when they enter a patient room, before any patient contact, before an aseptic task, after body fluid exposure risk, after patient contact, after contact with patient surroundings, and upon exiting the patient room.
Hospitals have a variety of techniques for reminding workers to follow hand hygiene protocols and for tracking worker compliance with hand hygiene protocols. One method of reminding workers to follow hand hygiene protocols is to send a signal (e.g., an audio or visual reminder) to the health care worker (HCW) when the health care worker enters or exits a patient's room. This method works well when hand hygiene requirements are the same for all patients and when the requirements are associated with a health care worker being at a particular location. One method of tracking hand hygiene compliance is to use “secret shoppers” to watch the staff to see if they are following the protocol. The secret shoppers may remind the health care workers and/or they may report on compliance. One drawback to the use of secret shoppers is that knowledge of the presence of the secret shoppers on particular days can cause an artificial spike in hand hygiene compliance, because the workers know that they are being watched.
Accordingly, there remains a need in the art for hand hygiene compliance systems that overcome these drawbacks.
This background information is provided to reveal information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention. No admission is necessarily intended, nor should be construed, that any of the preceding information constitutes prior art against the present invention.